Rigorous experimentation to turn our social safety nets into trampolines

Kudoz and Fifth Space reflect the next iteration of social innovation practice - rigorous experimentation to turn our social safety nets into trampolines.

Prospectus

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Introducing Kudoz & Fifth Space

Kudoz is an alternative to disability day programs, coming from 12-months of Research & Development. It’s a catalogue of hundreds of novel learning experiences hosted by passionate people in the community. Kudoz has been co-designed to address the poverty of experience felt by a segment of individuals and families within and beyond the disability sector.

Fifth Space is a social Research & Development laboratory inside three of British Columbia’s largest disability service providers. Frontline workers, mid-level managers and senior directors have 20% time to work in interagency teams, collect ethnographic data, and prototype new programs and policies from the ground-up.

Kudoz

Kudoz & Fifth Space bring to life 6 innovation principles:

1) Collaboration & Partnership

2) Delivery + Development

3) Capacity Building

Fifth Space and Kudoz are the product of a groundbreaking partnership between 3 service providers and InWithForward. Over a 12 month period, we’ve gone through an immersive re-search and prototyping stage. InWithForward invested time pro-bono in the research. The prototyping is financed by the service providers by reallo-cating their own dollars and by bootstrapping. This model changes the incentive struc-ture for innovation, amplifying leadership and ensuring long-term commitment to systems change − as opposed to dis-crete projects and external consultancy.

Fifth Space and Kudoz are up-skilling 35 staff within the agencies to work as innovation teams and use design + social science methods. The focus is on transferring know-how and discernment − the ability to understand and make good solutions to so-cial challenges − and em-powering staff to question and challenge their own biases and their sector’s cultural norms. Out of this capacity building comes revised HR structures and a new talent pipeline for the disability sector.

Fifth Space and Kudoz flip the sequence of typical program & policy develop-ment. Typically, policy and program development hap-pens prior to delivery and evaluation. Policy, delivery, and evaluation are separate functions performed by separate professionals. Not anymore. With Fifth Space and Kudoz, mixed staff teams start by evaluating current outcomes, imple-menting new services at a small-scale, and only then, formulating policy frame-works. The functions are blended rather than siloed.

Fifth Space and Kudoz are evidence of a distinct epistemology: one which says that the knowledge to solve social problems comes from people’s lived experiences. Immersive ethnographic fieldwork is the basis for generating solutions. Innovative ideas come from going to people, in their homes and backyards, rather than expecting people to come to workshops and forums.

Fifth Space and Kudoz show what it looks like to make abstract ideas real, at a small-scale, to rapidly refine and improve them. What’s being refined and improved is the underlying theory of change. We’re beta-testing which activities shift behaviors and outcomes for individuals, families and staff. This involves several months of intensive iteration of new roles, tools, metrics, and backend systems.

4) Data & Analysis 5) Rapid Prototyping 6) Outcome Focus

Fifth Space and Kudoz are oriented around flourishing outcomes. Success isn’t mea-sured in terms of the hours of care provided, but in terms of people’s lives: their purpose, possibility, sense of control, choice-making, capabilities, and strength of their natu-ral networks. Where Kudoz focuses on a shift in outcomes for individuals living with a disability and community members, Fifth Space focus-es on a shift in outcomes for staff within the disability sec-tor −to nurture the practice of reflection, discernment, and critical thinking and doing.

Fifth Space does 5 things:Roles not training. Teams not individuals. Critical thinking not tools.Intentional risk taking not risk avoidance. Spreading capacity not services.

Kudoz does 5 things:Learning not diversion. Platform for informal exchange not formal service provision. Catalyzes supply of and demand for in-community experiences.Enables individual and community level outcomes.Uses measurement to motivate behavior change.

Kudoz is one of seven solutions to come out of the Fifth Space methodology. A methodology we call Grounded Change.

Fifth Space:8 frontline workers10 mid-level managers 8 senior directors

Kudoz: 4 designers3 social scientists 1 business thinker 1 community mobilizer2 journalists 3 secondees

1) Form teams

2) Name perceived pain points

Kudoz Too many adults with a cogni-tive disability are socially disconnect-ed from community.

3) Spend time with people where they are

Fifth Space: 5 weeks of observation in group homes and day programs

Fifth Space: 7 re-framed problems, such as ‘Too many adults going to day programs are poorly matched to their peers’ and ‘Too many managers are fighting fires rather than coaching teams’

4) Re-frame problems & Re-set outcomes

5) Co-develop alternatives

6) Make & test front-stage interactions

Fifth Space in progress

Fifth Space: 7 pain points, such as ‘Too many adults going to day programs are bored during the day’ and ‘Too many managers lack motivation’

Kudoz 10 weeks of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with residents of a social housing complex

Kudoz Too many adults with a cognitive disability are isolated from novel learning experiences.

Kudoz new roles (Hosts, Experience Curators, Reflective Assistants), tools (catalogue, IPod App), training

Fifth Space new roles (e.g Social Concierge), tools (e.g games), settings (e.g speed dating)

Kudoz 5 potential solutions, includ-ing Kudoz: a catalogue of hundreds of learning experiences.

Fifth Space 7 potential solutions, including nTandem: matching processes to uncover the relational magic and 55 On Air: flash jams for managers to problem-solve.

7) Make & test back-stage systems

8) Embed learning & capacity to iterate

Kudoz new databases, contact management systems, subscription business models

Fifth Space create residencies, second-ments, rotations through Social R&D Lab

Kudoz integrate into staff hiring and induction

Kudoz and Fifth Space aim to solve social & system challenges simultaneously.

Kudoz responds to three pain points experienced by individuals living with a cognitive disability. Instead of just developing a new service to respond to this pain, we are

trying to go deeper and wider. Through the Fifth Space, we hope to address the systemic challenges preventing new solutions from taking hold and changing lives.

Experience poverty

Creating and Dismantling

Philosophy-Practice Disconnect Capacity Gap Structural Barriers

Stagnation Stigma

Three months of ethnographic fieldwork helped us identify a segment of people with a cognitive disability whose physical & mental health was on the decline, and who had few opportunities to keep their minds active. These were people who lacked an ongoing source of novelty and learning.

It’s not enough to create new programs and services. There is also a need to dismantle what doesn’t work, and to spread the capacity to critically think and continuously iterate when programs and services are not leading to good outcomes for people.

Staff of social services are hired, trained

and performance managed to deliver a stan-dard service rather than to co-design new models of practice. Anthropology, be-havioral science, user-cen-tered design, and adult learning are four disci-plines we see missing from social service agencies.

Workshops, trainings, online resources and networks aren’t sufficient to shift what staff do on a daily basis. Traditional hierarchies, a dearth of dedicated staff time, and an absence of methodological rigor can prevent new ideas from taking root.

We’re consolidating our learning and getting ready to spread the process of learning and solutions. We’re looking for like-minded organizational leaders, funders and policymakers to offer feedback and help with the larger ambition: transitioning our social safety nets into trampolines.

Once individuals living with a cognitive disability

graduate high school, there are limited options. In

our research, we met people with jobs who wanted much more out of life than what was on offer. But without access to other credentials over time, they had limited opportunity to move in a different direction.

Individuals with a cognitive disability reside in the com-munity, and yet there are not many ways for community members and individuals to mean-ingfully interact over time. Without quality contact points, (mis)percep-tions of incapability abound. True inclusion remains elusive.

www.kudoz.ca www.fifthspace.ca hello@inwithforward.com

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Kudoz responds to 3 pain points:

Fifth Space responds to 4 challenges:

Philosophies like Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) and personalized planning offer a strong alter-native narrative to traditional services, but they are blunt tools for change. While an important overarching moral perspective, these philosophies are not granular enough to shift practice. They identi-fy “what” needs to change, not “how” or “for whom”. To answer the “how”, we need an experimental mindset rather than an ideological mindset.